betide

Woe betide the philistine who requests a salt shaker or asks that a meticulously prepared dish be spice-bombed.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

Woe betide the grounds passholder who shows up at the “wrong” entrance; you may be made to walk several blocks, though several on Monday attempted to argue with U.N. police.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 19, 2022

"Woe betide you if you were a preacher and you misquoted," Lord Sentamu says.

From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2022

Woe betide the civic leader in a company town who threatens to buck the company’s interests.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2022

Woe betide the plant whose genetic program is mismatched to the latitude of the field in which it is planted!

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

But I have to wonder if, whatever betides, I can stay upbeat in spirit.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 16, 2019

It fails to mention Ogden Nash's "One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,/ Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it."

From Time Magazine Archive

Now woe to the warder, poor sinner, betides!

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 by Various

"To us," cries Beowulf in his last fight, "to us it shall be as our Weird betides, that Weird that is every man's lord!"

From History of the English People, Volume I Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 by John Richard Green

Now I bid you go to Combwich hill, there to wait what betides.

From A Thane of Wessex by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler

But first Ile tel you what betided me after I was brought to Doctour Zacharies.

From The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse by Edmund Gosse

This should have served to prefigure to me that my soul, once free and sovereign of itself, was on that day to lay aside its sovereignty and become a slave, as it betided.

From La Fiammetta by Giovanni Boccaccio

And when they had rested and were cheered, Ja'afar said, "Do thou acquaint me with all that betided thee from the time we took leave each of other until this day and date."

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 16 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

And again he held him silent of bitter words or of sweet; And quoth Sigmund, "What hath betided? is an adder in the meat?"

From The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs by William Morris

"And what calamity, O my brother hath betided thee?"

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 16 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

For prairie and mountain, windswept and high, For betiding beauty of earth and sky— Say a benediction e'er you pass by.

From The Miracle and Other Poems by Virna Sheard

The death of my son betiding while my soul was under this anxiety, I thought of nothing but resigning my dominions, and retiring for ever from the sight of mankind.

From Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story; Vathek, an Arabian Tale by William Beckford

Then spake the Carline: "I must now look along the ways of sleep and see what is betiding."

From The Sundering Flood by May Morris

With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding To a calm, eternal sea."

From The Argosy Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 by Charles W. Wood

O I know the Hand that is guiding me Through the shadow to the light; And I know that all betiding me Is meted out aright.

From Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul by James Mudge